


What Does That Make You But Mine

by clotpolesonly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Kira Yukimura, BAMF Stiles, Dreamwalking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Feels, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Kitsune Kira Yukimura, Kitsune Stiles Stilinski, Minor Allison Argent/Isaac Lahey/Scott McCall, Panic Attacks, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Post-Season/Series 03, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-07 04:50:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15901224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clotpolesonly/pseuds/clotpolesonly
Summary: Kira doesn't know where she stands anymore. Not with her mother, not with her friends, not with Scott. She just wants to keep out of the way until everything settles down and then maybe her life will start to make sense again.Except it doesn't, because nothing is ever that simple, is it?





	What Does That Make You But Mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StaciNadia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StaciNadia/gifts).



> you were probably not expecting to get a 20k fic out of this prompt, but to be fair, neither was i. if i had expected that, i wouldn't have wasted half my writing time on failed outlines for a different prompt, changed my mind to this one halfway through, and then let myself get carried away instead of keeping things brief because i have 1) no concept of time management, and 2) a whole lot of Kira feels i didn't realize i had until i started writing.
> 
> so here it is! all my Kira feels spilled out all over the place!!
> 
> i hope you enjoy it, because i certainly enjoyed writing it, even if it almost killed me a few times XD

The stairs were a very familiar place for Kira, especially with her lunch tray balanced on her knees. It had been a while since she’d eaten out here, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you forget. At least this time it wasn’t because she had no other option, it was just...well, awkward. Today was Allison’s first day back to school after her recovery, and Kira just felt like it would be an easier transition for everyone if she was out of the way for a little while.

Not that she’d told anyone that, because she was pretty sure everyone would’ve hemmed and hawed and tried to reassure her that that wasn’t the case, that she was their friend and always welcome. And it wasn’t like Kira didn’t believe that was true! She was sure it was, but that didn’t mean that her presence wouldn’t also be a complication.

Her friends had already been through enough. They didn’t need any more complications.

So, as far as anyone else knew, Kira was in the library finishing up some homework. The library didn’t allow food, though, so here she was, in the stairwell outside the cafeteria, picking at her food, waiting for the bell to ring and hoping none of her friends left lunch early and saw her there.

She wasn’t in luck.

Kira looked up as the cafeteria door swung open. It wasn’t the first time it had happened this period and she had stopped jumping every time, her nerves soothed by each random classmate that passed her by without a look, but this time it wasn’t a random classmate. It was Stiles.

Stiles had been back in school for a few days already. His dad and Scott had insisted he take a week off after the whole nogitsune debacle, and the fact that Stiles hadn’t put up much of a fuss about that told them all they needed to know about how fucked up he was by it.

No one was quite sure how he had managed to force the nogitsune out of his body—it was all so fast, a chaotic blur that no one could keep track of—and Stiles said he couldn’t remember. Kira wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth about that, but in the end it didn’t really matter. The nogitsune was gone, the little firefly trapped in its wooden jar and Stiles free of its control, and that was all she cared about. That, and the fact that Allison and Aiden had both survived their encounters with it.

Stiles didn’t see her immediately. He had his head down as he stopped just outside the doors, hands held up in front of him. Kira thought he might be counting his fingers again; Scott said he did that a lot, that it was some sort of way to prove that he wasn’t dreaming. Kira didn’t know if that was a reliable method, but she couldn’t blame him for checking however he could.

After a few long seconds, Stiles shook his head, hands curling into fists that fell down to his sides. Just as he started to look up, Kira entertained the possibility of scrambling backwards up the stairs and out of view, but she hadn’t even completed the thought before his eyes fell on her. They widened a bit, eyebrows rising with the motion, and he sent a glance one way—back to the cafeteria where all their friends were sitting—and then the other—toward the library where she had claimed she’d be—before settling back on her again.

A moment later he was dropping down onto the step beside her with a huff, elbows on his knees. He didn’t say anything though and Kira squirmed through a few quiet, very long seconds before she couldn’t take it anymore.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Up this close, Stiles looked tired. To be fair, he had been looking tired for almost two months, since just about as long as Kira had known him, but he had also been _possessed_ for most of that time so he had gotten a pass on it. Now he wasn’t, and it had been over a week, but he was still pale and drawn with dark circles under his eyes. His fingers were tapping at his knee nonstop, just an anxious little tic that almost looked like trembling.

He didn’t answer her question. Instead he said, “Are you avoiding Scott?”

Kira flushed. She was shaking her head immediately, her hair getting dangerously close to landing in her food.

“No! No, of course not, why would I—”

“Let me rephrase,” Stiles cut in. “Are you out here avoiding _Scott and Allison?_ ”

“I’m not _avoiding_ them,” Kira tried one more time. “I’m just—”

Stiles looked at her sidelong, completely unconvinced, and Kira’s excuses deflated in an instant.

“—avoiding them,” she finished miserably. “Does that make me bad?”

Because she certainly felt bad. As their friend, she knew she should be in there, supporting Scott, helping Allison through her transition now that her injuries were mostly healed. But Allison had sort of confessed some things when she thought she was going to die, and Scott had heard those things, and _Isaac_ had heard those things, and Isaac had almost left town but Scott had convinced him to stay.

Now everything was complicated and uncomfortable and no one knew where they stood, least of all Kira. She had been so sure that she and Scott were _something,_ or that they were going to be, but she wasn’t so sure now. It sort of felt like Scott had been walking on eggshells around her as much as the others lately, but his focus had been on Allison’s recovery and on Isaac’s hurt feelings, and he just didn’t need any more on his plate right now.

Kira didn’t want to be another source of stress in his life, especially not when it was so obvious that he still had at least some feelings for Allison. She clearly still had some for him. And Kira didn’t want to read too much into the way Scott and Isaac looked at each other, but it was sort of hard not to sometimes, so there was that.

It was better for everyone if she just left the three of them alone to sort themselves out. It would be easier for them if she wasn’t in the mix, getting in the way and stepping on everyone’s toes.

Stiles just snorted though.

“Course you’re not _bad,_ ” he said with a shrug.

“I just don’t want to, like, get between them or anything,” Kira said. “I know there’s a lot of history there, and then there’s Isaac too.” She picked up a soggy french fry and let it fall again. “And besides, it’s not like Scott and I were actually a thing, you know? I mean, he never promised me anything. He never even asked me out, so it’s not like I have any reason to be upset about it or anything. It’s fine, if he wants to... He’s got Allison, and Isaac maybe, and that’s totally fine. I’m fine.”

Kira picked up another french fry, but her appetite wasn’t where it needed to be to make that palatable. When she gave up on it and glanced at Stiles, he was looking at her with a pinched look on his face, like he really wanted to say something comforting but also didn’t want to lie to her or give her false hope. He couldn’t honestly say that Scott was sure to come around, that he was just distracted but there was no way he was getting back together with Allison (or Isaac), not with how things had been going in the last few weeks.

Stiles let out a sigh, rubbing at his forehead like it hurt.

“It’s okay to be upset,” he finally said. “Just because there were no promises, that doesn’t mean you don’t have any right to be hurt or sad that it didn’t work out.”

Kira bit her lip and looked away. It didn’t feel like pity, but the sympathy in Stiles’ eyes still sat heavy in her stomach. Her gaze fell to Stiles’ other hand instead. It was on his knee, fingers digging in in a way that honestly looked pretty painful. The hand on his forehead took a detour to swipe under his nose before returning to its constant tapping. As she watched, Stiles glanced up and down the corridor again, eyes darting all over. He rubbed his hands together, flexed his fingers, went back to fidgeting.

“Stiles, are you sure you’re okay?”

The question seemed to startle him. He swallowed hard enough for Kira to hear it and then smiled, too bright to be genuine. He pointed to her Marvel comic leggings.

“You know DC is better, right?” he said. He rubbed his hands together again, harder than before. Kira wasn’t completely sure he even knew he was doing it. “I mean, those are super cool and all, but you gotta know that nothing will ever top Batman.”

“Stiles, really,” Kira said. Normally she would’ve loved to have a Marvel versus DC debate, but not when Stiles was getting so worked up for no reason that she could see. It looked like he was sweating too and his eyes were still darting around like he was looking for an escape. “You just seem...jumpy, right now,” she said, like jumpy even began to cover it.

“Nah, I’m not— I’m fine,” Stiles said, and it was just as much of a lie as when Kira had said it earlier. The hand rubbing thing was really getting concerning. And just as Kira was opening her mouth to push the issue a bit, it leapfrogged past concerning and right into _alarming._

There was a burst of light and heat. Kira had to blink past the starburst afterimages left in her vision to realize that they were sparks. Big, bright, _sparks._ And they had come from Stiles.

Stiles who was staring at his hands like he had never seen them before, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. His breath was coming fast, not quite oncoming-panic-attack levels but maybe getting there. With a shake of his head, he bit out a curse, and then he was throwing himself down the stairs without another word.

Kira called out his name, but she was too stunned to follow before he had already disappeared down the hallway. She was left alone in the stairwell, lunch tray still balanced precariously on her knees, _reeling_ because she had seen sparks like that before. She had the broken lightbulb to prove it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Kira hovered outside her parents’ office, rocking on the balls of her feet. She’d made a move to knock on the door twice already, but she couldn’t seem to force herself to actually make contact.

She needed to tell her mom, she knew she did. Something weird was going on with Stiles, something that could only mean trouble, and they needed to get to the bottom of it. Kira didn’t want to think that what she _thought_ might be happening might _really_ be happening, but she didn’t know enough to know if she was wrong or not. Her mom was the most knowledgeable and qualified person around. If anyone would know what was going on and how to handle it, it would be her.

But Kira also really didn’t want to tell her mom. Not just because her mom felt almost like a stranger these days, but for Stiles’ sake. Was it _safe_ to tell her? Would she want to help Stiles or would this put a target on his back? They had already had to prevent her mom from killing Stiles once before. Because he’d been a threat, or _it_ had been a threat and he had been acceptable collateral damage.

Maybe Kira should just tell Scott instead, or Derek, or Deaton. Except that all of them would probably just tell her to talk to her mother. The best source of information any of them had on kitsune issues was the nine-hundred year old kitsune on the other side of this door. Who just so happened to be her mom.

And that was why she needed to knock now. Kira gave herself a shake, took a deep breath for fortification, and raised her fist to—

“Are you going to stand there all evening?”

Kira almost fell over completely, and also maybe might’ve had a small heart attack. Her mom was at the end of the short hallway, arms crossed and shoulder leaned against the wall like she’d been standing there watching Kira agonize for a while already.

Kira put a hand over her racing heart. “You scared me.”

Noshiko just raised an eyebrow and said, “You were looking for me?”

Kira looked back at the closed office door, her hesitation rushing back tenfold. Stiles had looked so scared, as scared as he had when he’d thrown himself at the mercy of the Oni and awaited their judgment, as when he’d held a katana to his own stomach and planned on pushing it in.

Noshiko had been one of the things that scared Stiles too, and not for no reason. But those sparks were something else.

The wooden floor creaked a bit as her mom pushed herself off the wall.

“Come,” she said. “Let’s have some tea.”

That was a familiar code phrase for having a serious mother-daughter talk. Kira had heard it a dozen times before. It had always been a little bit anxiety inducing, but that old nervousness seemed so superficial compared to the gut-deep uneasiness that settled in Kira now. Before, these talks had been about things like boys and appropriate skirt lengths and if her grades were high enough to get her into a good school later on, and those had seemed like such weighty topics at the time.

After chaos demons and possessions and internment camp massacres, Kira would give just about anything to go back to talks like that.

But she followed her mother to the kitchen anyway because this wasn’t a talk she could avoid, no matter how much she wanted to. She settled on a stool at the breakfast bar and sat on her hands while her mom set water on to boil. Neither of them said anything until the tea was made and poured.

“Now,” her mother said, settling across the bar from her. “What do you have to tell me?”

“Something happened earlier today,” Kira said slowly. “Something...weird.”

“Something happened to you?” her mom asked, and when Kira shook her head: “To whom then?”

Kira bit her lip. Her mother didn’t let her hesitate too long; her tone wasn’t quite sharp when she said Kira’s name, but it was insistent.

“It was Stiles,” Kira blurted out before she could chicken out. “Something happened— Well, he _did_ something. He didn’t mean to! And he kind of freaked, which I don’t blame him for, I mean, I’m kind of freaked out too, but—”

“What exactly did Stiles do?”

“I think he…” Kira had to fight through one more flare of indecision before she could make herself admit it out loud, even in a whisper. “I think he made foxfire.”

Her mom didn’t immediately jump up and reach for a weapon, which was what Kira had been fearing, but that didn’t mean that reaction wasn’t on its way so Kira hurried on.

“It can’t be what it looks like,” she said as firmly as she could manage. “It just can’t be. Stiles expelled the nogitsune, we know that. We have the thing trapped in a box! You trapped it there yourself, so you know that for sure, right? But then Stiles was rubbing his hands together all nervous and stuff, and it just—”

Kira made a little explosion noise, pantomiming the shower of sparks she’d borne witness to at lunch.

“And I don’t know what that means, you know? I don’t know how that would be possible, only I know that it _can’t_ be what it looks like because that would mean everything we went through was for nothing and it wasn’t enough to save him or anyone else and we’re all in danger again, especially Stiles, and I know I haven’t known him all that long but Stiles is my _friend_ and I couldn’t stand it if he—”

Her mother held up a hand and that was all that was needed to have Kira stuttering herself into silence.

“It is not the nogitsune.”

Even with the constant niggle of doubt that had taken up residence in the back of Kira’s mind where her mother was concerned—the result of her entire life up until this semester being a lie—that simple, confident statement was still enough to shut down much of the panic that had been growing in her chest.

“How do you know?”

Her mother took her time in answering, sipping at her tea in that placid way of hers. She laid the cup aside with a gentle click against the countertop.

“What Stiles did was risky,” she said finally. “I won’t call it unprecedented, but it was certainly not a feat that has been undertaken often, and that is because making a move like that has consequences.”

“Consequences,” Kira repeated faintly.

“Do you know what we have trapped in that box, Kira?”

That felt like a trick question. “The nogitsune?”

“A nogitsune is a void kitsune,” her mother allowed. “And I believe that we trapped the void, but not the kitsune.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Think of yourself. There is _you,_ and there is the fox, isn’t there?”

Kira did think. She thought of the pictures with swirling orange engulfing her small frame, an alien figure almost eclipsing her entirely. She thought of the instincts she’d never had before and the muscle memory that didn’t come from her muscles. She thought of the _presence_ she sometimes felt inside of her, a vast and unknowable thing that was equal parts soothing and terrifying, and so strong that it felt like it might overtake her if she let it.

She nodded.

Her mother nodded back.

“The fox itself is neutral. It is power and knowledge in spiritual form, but that spirit is nothing without a host. You are a host for your fox as I am a host for mine, and together we are each one being, but we are none of us indivisible.”

“So the nogitsune got split in half?” Kira asked. “Like, the fox half and the person half?”

“In a manner of speaking,” her mother said with a wry half smile. “I believe that what Stiles forced out of himself was, as you put it, the person half. He did not have the power necessary to eject a thousand year old fox spirit, but he had enough strength of mind to banish the consciousness that was hosting and guiding it.”

“But what does that mean for Stiles? That the actual fox is still there?”

“If he is producing foxfire the way that you can, it would seem so.”

Kira needed a minute to wrap her head around that. Noshiko didn’t interrupt, just sipped at her tea again while Kira ran through that afternoon’s encounter over and over again, digging around for any plausible explanation that wasn’t this. But static shock just didn’t cover it, and it hadn’t seemed like a first time thing. Stiles had been afraid, yes, but he hadn’t looked shocked. Kira was sure it had happened before, and that meant that it would happen again.

“My fox,” she said. “Is it new?”

“It is young,” her mother said, which wasn’t quite a yes, but close enough.

“And these spirits...they get stronger with age?”

Her mother nodded over her teacup, watching her steadily like she knew exactly where Kira’s thoughts were heading but wanted her to get there without any guidance. Kira didn’t like her thoughts though, not even a little bit, and she clutched at her own teacup hard enough to make her fingers hurt.

“I can barely control my own fox,” she admitted. “And now Stiles has a thousand year old fox stuck inside him. That’s not good, is it?”

Her mom didn’t answer the question, but she didn’t really need to. The fact that Stiles was throwing sparks on accident in the middle of the hallway during a school day said plenty on its own. Despite ultimately being defeated, the nogitsune had been pretty justified in boasting about its power; a millennium was a long time to gather strength. As Kira was only just coming to understand with her own fox, strength was only good if it came with _control,_ and that wasn’t something that Stiles had had a chance to learn.

Like she’d read her mind, her mother said, “He needs training. Proper training. I can give him that.”

“Oh, so _he_ gets proper kitsune training?”

It came out before Kira could stop it, bitter enough to take even her by surprise, but she didn’t take it back. She bit her tongue against the instinct to apologize because, as petty and immature as it might sound, this wasn’t _fair._ When had her training happened? When had anyone stopped to give her anything more than the briefest walkthrough of what the hell was happening to her and how she needed to handle it? She’d gotten thrown into the deep end before she’d even known there was a pool to get thrown into.

She half expected to get grounded or sent to her room for saying something so disrespectful. She knew her parents weren’t all that strict by most people’s standards, but she had never really given them a reason to be in the past. Kira had always been a good daughter, an obedient daughter who rarely talked back or got into trouble. But that had been with dress codes and curfews and C minuses on tests, not mystical abilities that could blow the entire power grid or literally get people killed if she didn’t know what she was doing.

Her mother had known her entire life that this was coming, and yet she had let her daughter go into all this blind. She hadn’t prepared her for any of it.

Kira was ready to fight about it. She was bracing herself to weather her mother’s chastisements, to stand up for herself against the inevitable disapproval.

What she wasn’t ready for was for her mom to avert her eyes, head ducked down so that her hair swung into her face. She certainly wasn’t ready for her mom to say, “I am sorry.”

Kira had never heard her mother apologize before. The words almost didn’t make sense. “What?”

“You’re upset,” her mom said. “I don’t blame you. You feel like I haven’t given you the attention and the guidance that you deserve, and in that you are right. I should have begun your training weeks ago, when your powers first began to manifest.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Her mother gave a delicate shrug. “Things happened,” she said simply. “I had a duty to Rhys, and to myself. The immediate danger took precedence.”

As much as it stung to have confirmation that she wasn’t a priority, Kira couldn’t really fault her mother for that, not when the threat level had been what it was.

“And now that the danger is passed?” she asked. “You’ll teach us both?”

Her mother shook her head. “The danger is not passed,” she said. “And that is precisely why I must.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

That night, Kira dreamed of swirling darkness, vast and impenetrable. She felt as though it should’ve frightened her, but it all felt oddly distant, like she was only on the fringes of the storm rather than in its center.

She woke abruptly in a cold sweat, chest aching with a fear that didn’t belong to her at all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Kira didn’t see Stiles until third period chemistry the next day, though not for lack of trying on her part. She had tried to catch up with him between classes, but she was pretty sure he was going out of his way to avoid her. Normally that was the kind of thing that would make her back off and give someone space—possibly forever, depending on how strong the standoffish vibe was—but there were sort of supernaturally extenuating circumstances at play and she really needed to talk to him.

He couldn’t avoid her here. And as luck would have it, they were doing paired lab work. As soon as Mrs Finch declared this, Stiles turned automatically to seek out Scott, but before he could finish the motion Kira was already sliding into the empty seat beside him. He looked a little alarmed, but Isaac had already taken the seat by Scott and Scott was smiling softly at him, so there was nothing Stiles could do but accept it or else make a scene trying to switch partners without explaining why he didn’t want to work with her.

Kira tried her best to look friendly and non-threatening, which wasn’t exactly something she had ever had a problem with before. Stiles just shot her a sidelong look and started tapping his fingers again.

Kira didn’t get the chance to bring up the previous day or anything her mom had told her before Mrs Finch started talking, which was sort of okay considering she had no idea how to start anyway. How was she supposed to tell her friend that he had sort of accidentally switched species and also merged with part of the demon that had possessed and mentally tortured him? Especially in the middle of class where anyone could overhear.

But it was the only time he couldn’t run away, so it had to be now.

“We need to talk about yesterday,” she whispered as they set up their experiment.

He muttered back, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” without looking at her, but his knee was bouncing under the table and there was a tremor in his hand. Kira was willing to bet that if she had been a werewolf, she would’ve heard his heartbeat skip.

Speaking of werewolves—Kira’s phone buzzed. It was a text from Scott a few tables back that consisted of three question marks. Swallowing a curse, she shoved her phone back into her pocket without responding.

Stiles must’ve seen the text anyway, or else made a pretty good assumption as to what it said. His fidgeting ramped up another notch, shifty eyes in full effect, and he busied himself in laying out the equipment they needed.

“Stiles,” Kira tried again, but she was at a loss for what to say that wouldn’t be incriminating. It wasn’t like she wanted to keep anything from Scott. Obviously, they were going to have to tell him before long, but she wanted to talk to Stiles first. This wasn’t going to be an easy thing to learn and Stiles should have the right to tell Scott himself.

Stiles was stubbornly ignoring her though, so it didn’t really matter what she said. He was pouring all his concentration into the bunsen burner, fiddling with the valve and clicking the little flint striker. It wasn’t working very well and he scowled at it, jaw clenching.

“I have some things to tell you,” Kira said.

He just struck the flint again, more aggressively. It still didn’t catch. He made a noise of frustration and opened the valve further.

Kira leaned in close and said, as quietly as she could manage, “Stiles, I talked to my mom.”

Sparks flew, but they didn’t come from the flint. Between one strike and the next, the bunsen burner flared to life with a burst of fire much larger than a burner of that size should’ve been able to produce. The heat of it had Kira jerking back out of the way on reflex, and cries of shock sounded from all around.

By the time Kira regrouped, Stiles had stumbled off of his stool. His eyes were wide and round, mouth hanging open, and he was looking between the now fire-free burner and his own hands with dawning horror. His breath was coming in gulps too quick to be anything but an oncoming panic attack, and if _that_ was what happened when Stiles panicked then he needed to get out of there _quick._

Kira grabbed Stiles by the wrists, pulling his hands in close and out of view of the curious eyes on all sides.

“Oh wow,” she said loudly, “that looks like it hurts!” To Mrs Finch: “These look like pretty bad burns. He should really go to the nurse. I’ll take him.”

She didn’t wait for permission before dragging an unresisting Stiles out the door. They didn’t make it halfway down the hall before Stiles’ legs gave out from under him. He collapsed sideways, shoulder colliding hard with the row of lockers, and Kira guided him down to sit on the floor. He was really gasping for breath now. He had his hands up in front of him again, but they were shaking too hard for him to get an accurate count of his fingers.

Kira had never actually seen a panic attack before. Her own heart was racing in her chest, every instinct telling her to make it better somehow, but she didn’t know how to fix this.

“Hey,” she said, reaching out to take hold of Stiles’ wrist again, trying to hold them steady. “Hey, you’re okay. Stiles, you’re going to be okay.”

Stiles shook his head. “Dreaming,” he said. “It’s back. Kira, it’s back, I didn’t get rid of it. It’s still here, it’s _here_ and it’s going to—”

“No, no, no,” Kira cut in. “No, Stiles, that’s not what’s happening. It’s gone! We checked. We made absolutely sure. The nogitsune is trapped where it can never get out, remember?”

He nodded, but that clearly wasn’t enough to convince him. The lights above their heads flickered wildly, apparently responding to Stiles’ hysteria. Kira could feel the surge of power, the way it swelled inside of Stiles and spilled out without direction. She reacted on instinct, the way she had done in the power plant and at the hospital; she tightened her grip on Stiles’ wrists and imagined herself _pulling_ at that power, dragging the energy into herself.

It was a heady rush, hot and overwhelming, but it did the trick. The overhead lights settled back into their steady glow. Kira wasn’t sure that Stiles had even noticed them going crazy, too preoccupied with fighting the battle against his own mind and body. He was still wild-eyed and wheezing, convinced that he was back in the nightmare when really he just had an entirely new problem to contend with. But that wasn’t what he needed to hear right now.

“You’re _you,_ Stiles,” Kira tried again. “You’re only yourself now. The Oni said so. Do you remember that? The Oni marked you to prove it.”

Stiles tugged at her hold until she released one of his hands. It flew back to scrabble at his ear, searching for some sign of the symbol the Oni had left behind. The kanji meaning “self”. It wasn’t anything he could feel though and he whined, a high noise of distress.

Kira shushed him. “Here, I’ll look. Just hold on, Stiles, and I’ll check.”

Stiles managed to hold still while Kira leaned in close, a hand on his shoulder to steady herself. Sure enough, the mark was still there, like a backwards five tucked in the space behind his right ear.

“It’s there,” she assured him. “The kanji is still there. That means you can’t be possessed, Stiles. There’s nothing inside of you.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true, was it?

Kira rephrased: “There’s nothing _bad_ inside of you. No one is controlling you but you.”

Stiles stared at her with something akin to desperation, like he wanted so badly to believe her. His free hand latched onto her wrist, holding on tight as he struggled to slow his breathing. Kira just kept repeating that he was okay, that he was awake, that he was himself. Anything she could think of to help bring him back to himself. It seemed to be doing some good, bit by bit, second by agonizingly long second.

By the time Stiles loosened his grip on her and let his head fall back against the lockers, Kira felt almost as exhausted as he looked. Even when Stiles released her wrist, she kept a hold of his, though she let those hands fall down to rest on his knee while her other stayed on Stiles’ shoulder. She let out a shaky breath that Stiles echoed.

The sound of the classroom door opening made them both jump. It wasn’t the end of class yet, thank god. It was just Scott, thanking Mrs Finch genially for the hall pass and closing the door resolutely behind him. The act dropped in a second and there was concern written in every line of his face by the time he came to kneel beside Kira.

“Hey, Stiles, buddy,” he said gently. “Are you okay? What happened in there? You didn’t actually get burned.”

Stiles opened his mouth but nothing came out. He looked back and forth between the two of them, and Kira didn’t know if it was from the panic attack or just the stress of the situation, but it really looked like Stiles might cry.

Of course, that only made Scott more worried. So, of course, he looked to Kira, who clearly knew more about what was going on with his best friend than he did. She hated seeing that lost look on his face. She hated that Stiles thought he was losing himself all over again. She hated a lot of things, and in that moment a not so tiny part of her wished that her family had never left New York and her grades were still all she had to worry about.

But then she would never have met either of them at all. She wouldn’t have had friends like these to worry about and who worried about her in return. She might never have had to fight to the death against mystical enemies, but they might’ve had to fight without her and they might not have come out the other side.

No matter how fucked up things were, she couldn’t regret having met them. And she couldn’t _not_ help them however she could.

“Scott,” she said. “Look at me with your eyes. Your _other_ eyes.”

Scott frowned at her. “What for?”

“Just do it. Please.”

Scott closed his eyes, and when he opened them next, they were glowing red. “Now what?”

“What do you see?” Kira asked.

His gaze traced over Kira’s face and then up, out and around her. “You. Your fox.”

Kira nodded, feeling a thrum of nerves; she really hoped this worked like she was expecting it to. She hadn’t asked her mom if it would. But it was the easiest way to convince them of what was happening here, beyond what a simple explanation could do. She crossed her metaphorical fingers and said, “Now look at Stiles.”

Scott frowned even harder this time, and Stiles shifted nervously, sitting up a little straighter.

“Why would I do that?” Scott asked.

“Trust me,” Kira said. “Just look at him and tell me what you see.”

He did, and Kira saw it the second he realized what he was seeing. His face went slack, eyes tracing the empty air around Stiles’ form. Only it wasn’t empty anymore, not to Scott’s enhanced sight.

Stiles shifted again, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand.

“Scott?” he asked, voice rough and uneasy. “Scottie, what’re you doing?”

“I don’t understand,” Scott said.

“God, Scott, you can’t just say shit like that,” Stiles said with a hard shake of his head. “What’s going on? What do you see?”

“You look like Kira.”

Stiles’ face screwed up in confusion. “I look _what?_ ”

Scott finally abandoned his examination to look Stiles in the eye. “You look like a kitsune.”

There was a single second where Kira could see the way that statement registered to Stiles, the way his breath hitched and caught in his chest, the sudden upsurge of new panic.

“Not a nogitsune!” she hurried to say. “Right, Scott?”

“What?” he asked. Then: “Oh! No! Definitely no, not like that at all. This is totally different. I never saw anything like this when you were possessed.”

“Like _what,_ Scott?” Stiles snapped.

Scott waved a hand around Stiles’ head. “The big, orangey fox spirit aura thing,” he said. “Like Kira has. I know you’ve seen at least one picture. The nogitsune didn’t manifest anything like that. It was just...dark. But this is bright! Like, _really bright._ ”

“Brighter than mine, you mean,” Kira said.

Scott didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no either, which was essentially a yes. “What does that mean?”

“What does _any_ of this mean?” Stiles asked, sounding one step from pulling his hair out or possibly dissolving into hysterics again.

With a sigh, Kira shifted off of her sore knees to sit cross-legged on the hallway floor. Scott followed her lead, settling in to listen and scooting close enough to press his knee up against Stiles’ leg. Stiles shot him a look like he didn’t appreciate the gesture, but a bit of the tension left his shoulders anyway.

Kira started with the most important thing.

“You’re not possessed. Not again, and not still. Not at all.”

“Then what the fuck is—”

“A nogitsune is a void kitsune,” Kira said, borrowing her mother’s phrasing. “Essentially, you forced out the _void_ part, but the _kitsune_ part stayed with you. The actual fox spirit that makes a person into a kitsune is its own thing, but it needs a host, and since you separated it from its old host by forcing the void out, you’ve become its new host instead. Which isn’t bad!” she said quickly. “The spirit itself is totally neutral, just like mine is.”

“Is yours lighting shit on fire and nearly blacking out the whole school?”

Okay, maybe Stiles _had_ noticed the lights going haywire.

“Not quite,” Kira allowed. “But it does blow up light bulbs sometimes on accident. I came into my powers months ago and I’m definitely still struggling with it all. And that’s okay, you know? It’s just because I don’t know what to do with it yet. We haven’t been _taught_ how to handle these powers yet, but we can be. My mom can teach us. She can—”

“Your _mom?_ ” Stiles yelped. “No, no, no. Your mom literally advocated for _killing me_ the last time I could do this kind of thing.”

Kira cringed. “This is totally different,” she insisted. “It was the nogitsune she wanted to kill, and you were just collateral damage.” And that probably wasn’t helping. “But the nogitsune is gone! Now you’re just a regular kitsune, like me!” Except with a thousand year old fox spirit with power beyond anything Kira could hope to match. “She just wants to make sure that you get the training you need. That we both do.”

Stiles looked less than convinced. Really, he looked like he was still struggling to wrap his head around the concept that he might be anything other than human. He was shaking his head again, but Scott spoke up before he could protest further.

“You should do it,” he said. “This is what’s had you acting so weird lately, right? These powers acting up? If Noshiko thinks she can help you get them under control, then I think it’s a good idea.”

“She doesn’t have anything against _you,_ Stiles,” Kira put in. “And anyway, I’ll be there every step of the way. We’ll only practice together, I promise.”

Stiles pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, taking a few deep, slow breaths. Scott said his name, reaching out to touch his arm, but Stiles flinched away from the contact. The next second he was pushing himself off the floor on shaky legs.

“I think I need to go home,” he said. “Yeah, I just— I gotta go.”

“Wait, Stiles,” Kira said as she and Scott both moved to follow him.

Stiles held up a hand. “I just need to— I need a minute, okay? I’ll do whatever later, but right now I need to go home.”

He wouldn’t have any trouble convincing the nurse to send him home sick, that was for sure. He was a mess, still pale and sweaty from his panic attack, dazed and unsteady on his feet.

“Are you sure you can get home on your own?” Scott asked, eyeing him. “I could drive you.”

Stiles shook his head. “I’ll be fine, I swear. I’ll text you.”

He threw a look at Kira that she couldn’t parse and then he was down the hall and out of sight around the corner, leaving her alone in the corridor. With Scott. Whom she had been avoiding for days.

Wow, this was awkward.

Scott beat her to finding words. He touched her arm gently and said, “Hey. I’m sorry I haven’t been around much lately. With Allison, and Isaac… I didn’t mean to leave you hanging.”

Kira pulled away, wrapping her arms around her middle.

“No,” she said. “It’s fine! I get it. I mean, I know they’re both really important to you.”

“You’re important to me too.”

He sounded so earnest, like he really wanted her to understand that. And she did. She had no doubt that Scott cared about her a lot, that he would do anything for her. That he would find a way to make time for her if she asked him to, even if that meant giving up homework time and sleep. It was written all over his face that he would and it sort of made her head spin a little bit.

He had that sort of effect on people, the one that made them feel like they were the only person in his entire world. But they weren’t—Kira wasn’t. They couldn’t be, because he cared so much for so many. He was always going to be pulled in a million different directions, and he would always go because that was who he was. So Kira wasn’t going to ask any more of him. He didn’t need that.

“Scott.”

Something in her tone must have spoken for her because Scott’s outstretched hand fell. His face did too, hopeful expression turning sad all at once.

Kira swallowed around the sudden guilty lump in her throat and said, “There’s so much going on, you know? With...everything. It’s just not a good time for this.”

“For us?”

As if they had ever really been an “us” to start with.

“You just focus on Allison and Isaac,” she said. “They need you right now. And Stiles needs me! I should really focus on him.”

Scott looked like he might argue. Like he might fight for her, even just to say that he’d tried. Kira would cave if he did, she knew it. She would let him tear himself apart trying not to disappoint anyone, trying to _please_ everyone, and that wasn’t fair to either of them.

So when the bell rang and the classroom door opened to release a flood of students, she let out a breath of relief. And when Isaac called Scott’s name from down the hall, Allison at his side, and Scott turned to look, she took the opportunity to fade into the growing crowd and out of sight.

It was better this way, for all of them. After all, she had Stiles to focus on now.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Kira dreamed of darkness again that night, and this time it _screamed._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Right up until the the first training session started, Kira was almost sure that Stiles was going to back out. Sure, he had answered her text messages in the affirmative, but his responses had been distinctly lackluster compared to how many emojis he usually indulged in and he hadn’t come to school that day at all. Scott had assured her repeatedly that he had talked to Stiles, that he was okay—relatively speaking—and that he would be there, but that didn’t mean Kira wasn’t unreasonably relieved to see that clunky blue Jeep shudder to a halt in her driveway at quarter to six.

Stiles didn’t look much better than he had the day before: pale, dark circles under his eyes, hair a mess. But he gave her an awkward wave and followed her inside with only a moment of hesitation.

He hesitated again at the door to the living room. Noshiko stared back at him steadily, her face giving away nothing at all, and Kira looked back and forth between them with her bottom lip caught firmly between her teeth. Her mom broke the standoff first.

“Thank you for coming, Stiles,” she said with an odd feeling of formality.

Stiles shifted on his feet. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Thanks for...this.” He gestured vaguely.

“It is necessary. Take a seat and we will begin.”

Kira sat cross-legged in the open floor space and pulled Stiles down beside her. Her heart was in her throat, but she wasn’t sure if it was nerves or excitement. After all, she had no idea what this training would consist of or what they would even be learning. Considering all they’d been through in the last few months, she had half expected this to be a sparring session with katanas and she had _not_ had high expectations for Stiles coming out of that with all his limbs intact.

Luckily, there were no bladed weapons in sight. This first lesson, apparently, was to begin with a lot of talking. Background information, mostly, just an overview of what kitsune were and what they could do.

There were thirteen types of kitsune, her mother told them, but they weren’t discrete categories so much as elemental affinities. Most abilities could manifest in any type of kitsune, it was just the potency that varied. Most kitsunes had a handful of powers that they showed an aptitude for—water kitsunes were typically good healers, fire kitsunes couldn’t be harmed by fire attacks, and thunder kitsunes like Kira could easily absorb and produce lightning.

Those all made sense, but some of the other abilities Noshiko listed gave them pause. Insanity inducement, her mom said, and Stiles flinched. Dream manipulation had him turning even paler. He swallowed back a pitiful noise in his throat at the mention of life energy absorption, which often took the form of siphoning off physical pain or strong emotion.

His distress was so palpable that Kira almost told her mother to stop her dispassionate speech for fear of him bolting out the door then and there. But he didn’t do that. He hung his head and took slow, shaky breaths, fingers tapping one by one in a quick and steady rhythm against his knee; counting.

Kira leaned just a bit closer to him, letting their shoulders press together. It wasn’t much, but it was all she could do to remind him that he wasn’t alone, that she was in this with him. She thought maybe Stiles’ tapping slowed down a bit, but she couldn’t be sure.

Noshiko kept listing. Astral projection, she said, usually found in celestial kitsunes like her. Shapeshifting, a very common ability found in almost all kitsune once they reached a certain age. Illusions: again, very common. The ability to heal from wounds more quickly, sometimes accompanied by enhanced senses akin to a werewolf’s. Flight, mostly for celestial and wind kitsunes. Plant manipulation, for forest kitsunes. Invisibility and intangibility, not always found together.

So much of it made Kira’s head spin, but it was the extended lifespan—centuries, they could live, long enough for a dozen average lives or more, one after the other as the rest of the world moved on around them—that had her digging her nails into her palms and clenching her jaw hard enough to make her teeth squeak. Her nine hundred year old mother didn’t seem to notice, or, if she _did_ , then she pretended not to. Kira wasn’t sure which option stung more.

Stiles’ shoulder bumped hers. His head was still down, but he glanced up at her, then down at her white-knuckled fists. She released them and tried to recenter herself; there was no point in being angry, was there? Anger didn’t change anything. It wouldn’t make it so that her mother hadn’t lied to her for her entire life about what she was—what _they_ were—or put her back to what she was before. All she could do was pay attention and learn what her mother was willing to teach her now.

Foxfire. Since the two of them were so young, they couldn’t be sure which abilities they would have a strong affinity for, so it was decided that the most prudent thing to do was focus on the ability they both had for sure.

Kira didn’t ask about Stiles’ thousand year old fox or if it would still have all the same abilities it had had before. If the spiritual power came from the fox, did the way it manifested come from the host? Was the power channeled in the way that came most naturally to the host or was the elemental inclination a part of the spirit itself? Her mother was talking about host and fox as one unit, which was probably the most reasonable way to view it most of the time, but Stiles was sort of a special case.

She didn’t ask if Stiles was a void kitsune or a new type entirely. She was certain that would send him spiraling. Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer herself.

Noshiko gave them each a bronze dish with some kindling in it and told them to set it burning. She described qi and how it flowed through the body, how it _felt,_ how to use visualizations to direct and channel it. She demonstrated on kindling of her own; a lick of flame came to her fingertips as easy as breathing.

It wasn’t that easy for Kira. The energy was such a vague concept that she just couldn’t seem to get a grasp on it. She could visualize flames all day long without anything spontaneously combusting.

Still, she stared down at her bowl, held her hand out over it, and _tried._ She closed her eyes and breathed deep and tried her best to follow her mother’s instructions, no matter how weird and pointless it seemed. They were doing this for a reason, after all. This was supposed to help her get control of what she could do. Practice would make perfect eventually.

Stiles had better luck. Well...he made smoke, at least. And then immediately jerked back hard enough to overturn the bowl onto the carpet. Noshiko set it to rights, unfazed, and told him to do it again. Only Stiles couldn’t seem to make himself repeat the feat. His hand shook when he held it out and his breathing was uneven. He kept flinching for no reason that Kira could see, stopping to scrub at his face and run fingers through his hair.

Kira could see her mother getting impatient. Her face didn’t change much, just a tightening around the mouth, but Kira was very familiar with all of her mother’s microexpressions and this one clearly said that she was getting tired of this.

“Control yourself,” Noshiko snapped after the eighth time Stiles pulled his hand back abruptly.

Stiles clenched his jaw tight and said, “I’m working on it, okay?”

“Work harder.” Noshiko ignored the indignant noise Stiles made. “With power must come discipline,” she said staunchly, “and discipline comes with diligence.”

“Yeah, well, self-discipline has never exactly been something I’d put on my resume,” Stiles shot back. “Ask anyone, they’ll be happy to tell you.”

To Kira’s immense surprise, Noshiko didn't comment on Stiles’ tone. Usually she was very quick to call out disrespect and shut it down hard, but this time Noshiko closed her eyes for a moment and let out a slow breath. “Discipline is a skill like any other,” she said. “Like foxfire, it can be cultivated. Yet you will achieve _nothing_ if you do not try.”

“I am trying,” Stiles insisted, staring at his bowl like it might jump up and bite him. “I _am,_ it’s just— I can’t—”

“You _can._ ” Noshiko’s tone was entirely unforgiving. “You are choosing not to.”

“Mom,” Kira tried to cut in, but her mother spoke over her.

“Power like yours cannot be left unchecked. Nor can it be repressed. You must control your fox or your fox will control you.”

Kira knew right away that was the wrong thing to say. All the color drained from Stiles’ face in an instant. In the next, he was scrambling off the floor and disappearing into the hallway, thankfully not in the direction that led to the front door. Kira pushed herself up to follow him but turned back to her mother before she’d reached the door.

“Why did you say that?” she demanded.

Noshiko raised her chin, unrepentant, and said, “It is a truth he needed to hear.”

Kira shook her head. “Not like that.”

She left her mother to stare after her without another word; the training session was over anyway.

Stiles was around the next corner, on the floor outside the guest bathroom with his knees drawn up and fingers laced on the back of his bowed head. He was taking long, shuddering breaths that wheezed on their way in and came back out too sharply.

Kira folded herself down beside him but didn’t say anything immediately, just wrapped her arms around her own knees and waited. Distantly she could hear the scraping that was probably her mother putting the living room furniture back into place. She closed her eyes, leaned her back against the wall, and waited a bit more.

Once Stiles didn’t sound a hairsbreadth from the edge, Kira said, “I’m sorry. For my mom. I know she can be a little harsh. There’s a reason my dad is the teacher and not her.”

Stiles lifted his head and sniffed. “She doesn’t have good chalkboard-side manner, that’s for sure.”

Kira bit her lip. “She just...has high expectations, that’s all. She wants you to do well. _Both_ of us.”

“She wants me to not go nuclear, you mean,” Stiles corrected her with a bitter twist to his lips. “She thinks I’m a ticking fucking timebomb. She’s probably not wrong.”

Kira couldn’t really argue that; that was _exactly_ what her mother thought. “She’s trying to help,” she settled for. “She might be pushy about it, but she just wants you to be able to use the power you have effectively.”

“And what if I don’t _want_ to use it effectively?”Stiles said in a rush. “Maybe I don’t _want_ to be good at the shit I can do. Maybe I don’t want to use it all, what about that?”

Kira shook her head. “Stiles… You can’t just ignore it. You’ve tried ignoring it and it led to you fleeing school grounds twice in as many days. You heard what my mom said: it can’t be repressed.”

Stiles’ head collided with the wall hard enough to make Kira wince in sympathy. He didn’t seem to care. He just stared up at the ceiling, tension written in every line of his body. Slowly, Kira reached out to place her hand over his where it was fisted on his knee. He started, staring down at it, but the tight fist loosened a bit, even if it was just from the surprise.

“I know all this is scary,” Kira said. “But it won’t always be. This is just new, you know? You just need to get familiar with the feeling of it and then it won’t be as scary anymore.”

For a long minute, Kira thought he wasn’t going to respond, that they would just leave it at that. But then, so quietly she almost missed it:

“I know the feeling though.”

Kira hummed in question. His fingers twitched under hers like he might pull away, but Kira tightened her hold just a bit. He was still staring at their hands.

“I am intimately—” His voice cracked on the word. “—familiar with it. I know how it feels to be so full of it that I might burst at the seams, and to still be hungry for more. To _crave_ it.”

The words sent a shiver down Kira’s spine.

“I remember everything I did. Or _it_ did, whatever. It doesn’t really make a difference because, whether it was me or not, I remember being _strong._ And I remember liking it. All that power at my fingertips, enough so that I would never have to be scared again because I was stronger than anything that could threaten me. That feeling—”

Stiles’ next breath caught in his throat. His fist unfurled and suddenly his fingers were threading through hers and holding on tight.

“I never thought I could be more afraid than when that thing had control of me,” he said, wet eyes fixed unblinkingly on the wall across from them where they sat. “I was so wrong. At least then I could tell myself it wasn’t me and those feelings weren’t mine. But now I’m just me and those feelings are still there, and it would be _so easy_ to give in to it. I just know that the second I let it out, I’ll never be able to stop. I’m not strong enough for that.”

“Stiles.” Kira squeezed his hand. “You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”

He was already shaking his head. “You don’t get it,” he said with a pitiful attempt at a wry smile. “Addictive tendencies sort of run in the family.”

Kira swallowed down a sigh. She shifted in her seat, letting her legs stretch out in front of her, and the metal of her sword belt pinched at her side. Like every other time she was reminded of the deadly weapon she now wore as an accessory, Kira couldn’t help but marvel at what surreal nonsense her life had turned into. She wouldn’t have wished it on anyone.

“You heard about what I did at the hospital, right?” she asked. “When the nogitsune cut all those cables?”

“You mean when Isaac almost ended up dead?” The _because of me_ was loud, if unspoken. “Yeah, I heard about that.”

“So you heard that I grabbed hold of that power cable and sucked all that electricity into myself and walked away without a single burn.”

Whether he had heard about it or not, Stiles turned to look at her for the first time since she’d sat down. Kira looked back, fighting down the instinct to turn away, to hide her face behind a curtain of hair.

“I’d never felt anything like that,” she said. “That kind of... _rush._ I mean, I’ve never done drugs, but I can’t imagine they could ever measure up.”

Stiles studied her for a moment, dark eyes searching for something in her expression. “Yeah, I guess that sets the bar pretty high.”

“I didn’t know I could do that until I did it,” Kira told him. “And I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing any baby thunder kitsune could do, or what. I don’t have any idea how strong I am, or how strong I’ll be when I’m older—” A hundred years older. Three hundred. Nine hundred. “—and it scares me too. Last semester I was totally normal, and now I’m draining the whole power grid like a fruit smoothie! What the heck am I going to be doing by senior year?”

Stiles surprised them both with a laugh, weak and croaky though it was.

“Well, at least you got cool ninja sword skills out of the deal,” he said. He tried to gesture, but he still had a hold of Kira’s hand. He didn’t let go, just laid them both back on his knee. “Can’t say I’m not jealous of that.”

“Oh, please,” Kira said around a smile. “We’ll have a physical training session soon and you’ll start throwing around nunchucks like a pro, and then I’ll be the jealous one. Just you watch.”

Stiles chuckled again, a bit stronger. “Oh yeah? This gonna turn me into Daredevil? I could get behind that.”

Kira hummed thoughtfully. “I was thinking more along the lines of Donatello,” she said, “but whatever makes you feel better.”

Stiles made an indignant noise. “Did you just compare me to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?”

When all Kira did was giggle in response, Stiles bumped her shoulder hard enough to knock her sideways. She bumped him back just as hard and then he was laughing again too. Somehow they ended up with Kira’s head on Stiles’ shoulder, his cheek against her hair.

He still had a hold of her hand.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The darkness wasn’t unexpected this time. It raged and howled like a hurricane, but none of it reached Kira where she was. Again, it felt like she was stood at the outer edge, like if she just stepped forward she would be consumed by it. But there was no impulse to urge her on. She stayed where she was, watching.

What she was looking for, she didn’t know, but she knew that she didn’t find it. She woke once more with a phantom scream in her ears and a secondhand fear tightening her throat.

She didn’t get back to sleep that night.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Stiles came back. Kira hadn’t been sure that he would after what a mess the first training session had turned into, but the next day he was there, shoulders squared and teeth clenched. He couldn’t seem to look Noshiko in the eye, but Noshiko didn’t acknowledge the painful tension between them.

Kira thought maybe her mom felt a little guilty for pushing Stiles past his breaking point, but she’d never say so.

They settled into something like a routine. Every other day at Kira’s house, in her living room with all the furniture pushed aside. They listened to Noshiko lecture, telling tales that sometimes sounded like pure fable and other times got strangely close to a science lesson. Then they would practice.

It seemed like Stiles was getting better. He rarely bolted again, at least. Sometimes he still had to excuse himself, disappear into the hallway for a few minutes to pull himself together, but he almost always came back. He’d settle down at Kira’s side, close enough to lean on her, and nod at Noshiko. She would nod back and pick up the lesson where they had left off without comment.

On the rare occasions that Stiles did cut a session short, Kira would get a text—sometimes from Stiles, sometimes from Scott, once from Malia—to assure her that he was okay and she didn’t need to worry. She worried anyway.

Those nights, her mother would come to her room. They would sit cross-legged on her bed together, the little bronze bowl between them, and Noshiko would guide her through the exercises one on one. It always felt a little bit like an apology, like Noshiko felt bad for focusing more attention on Stiles than on her own daughter during their regular training.

Kira understood why she did; the squeaky wheel always got the grease.

Kira had a decent grasp of foxfire now. She could bring a flame to her palm at will, though it took a lot of concentration to keep it there for long. She could light the kindling without causing it to flare up or fizzle out nine times out of ten. She was even starting to recognize and understand the flow of energy that her mom kept talking about, the way qi moved through her veins.

Stiles said he could feel it too, one afternoon as her mother set the furniture back in place. He said it burned like ice on bare skin.

He had only managed foxfire a few times in the last couple of weeks. He still had a tendency to get right up to the edge and then chicken out, force it back, retreat into himself. But he was trying. He was really trying to push through, and even though the first time he successfully held fire in his hand sent him into a pretty impressive panic attack, he had smiled at Kira afterwards and said, “I did it. And I didn’t burn anything down.”

Kira had hugged him then, as tight as she could, and she hadn’t realized until after he had left for the night that that was something she’d never done before. Normally that would’ve made her a nervous wreck wondering if she’d crossed some line and made him uncomfortable without realizing and everything would be super awkward forever, but Stiles had still been smiling when she’d pulled back. He had let his hand trace down her arm and squeezed her hand. He’d texted her later to let her know he’d gotten home safely.

She determined that he was okay with it, and he probably wouldn’t even mind if she hugged him again sometime.

Kira found that she wouldn’t mind either.

For all Stiles’ bluster and sarcasm and general prickly nature, he was actually really sweet sometimes. When Kira was getting frustrated with something, he would always bump her shoulder, give her an encouraging half-smile or make some joke. Sometimes he made comic book references under his breath that had the two of them snickering into their bronze bowls while Noshiko frowned at them.

Last week he had brought over a stack of DC comics with the stated intent of showing her the error of her Marvel-loving ways, but really they’d just ended up ordering pizza and watching youtube videos until her dad had gotten home and raised an eyebrow at Stiles being in his daughter’s bedroom so late. Stiles had gone red in the face and made his escape pretty fast, but he’d left the comics. Kira had stayed up half the night to read them, and not only because sleep wasn’t an appealing prospect.

The dreams kept coming. Always with that shrieking black cloud, swirling around something in the distance that Kira couldn’t see through the darkness. Some nights it was tamer than others and Kira could wake up in the morning with only a lowkey unease resting in her stomach. Sometimes it roared like a dragon and Kira bolted up in the middle of the night gasping for breath, absolutely certain that something was coming for...someone. Because it wasn’t her. Whatever they were, these dreams weren’t about her.

That didn’t stop her from being worn down after so many interrupted nights. Her dad kept trying to give her calming teas, which was nice but didn’t actually help.

Lydia had volunteered what brand of eye mask she used which, when coupled with the lingering sidelong look she gave her, was clearly her subtle way of saying she’d noticed and was concerned.

Malia was less subtle. She asked outright why Kira was so tired. Kira brushed her off; she wasn’t sure how to explain what was happening anyway. At least, not without raising a lot of alarms. Strange and inconvenient as the dreams were, Kira didn’t get any sense that they were _bad._ It wasn’t anything for her friends to worry about.

Of course, that didn’t stop Scott from worrying. Nothing on earth could stop Scott from worrying. He asked every day how she was doing, how training was going, if she was taking care of herself. It was a little stilted, a little awkward, but that was Kira’s fault for acknowledging out loud what they’d had between them just so she could end it preemptively. Scott had every right to feel wrongfooted after that, or even _hurt,_ but he still smiled at her and checked in with her and was the all-around sweet and caring guy he had always been.

Sometimes he asked her how Stiles’ training was going too.

“He doesn’t really talk about that,” he said at lacrosse practice one day. “Not to me, or Lydia. He just says he’s fine and changes the subject.”

Kira didn’t ask if Stiles was lying when he said that, if his heartbeat or his chemosignals gave him away, but she didn’t really need to. For all that he was doing better than he had a few weeks ago, that didn’t mean he was _fine._ He wasn’t running out of school or making bunsen burners explode or sending the hall lights flickering anymore, and he wasn’t avoiding the rest of the pack as much as he had been, but he still looked _exhausted._ Maybe even more so than before. Clearly, Kira wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping.

Kira considered asking him about it. But he waved off all of Scott’s questions and made quips to Lydia, and if he wouldn’t talk to them then what were the odds he’d do any different with her? He’d known them both way longer. Just because he’d eaten pizza on Kira’s bed and scorched her living room floor and let her hold his hand through panic attacks, that didn’t mean she had a right to know _everything._ If he wanted to tell her why he wasn’t sleeping, then he would tell her. She wasn’t going to push on this. She’d be a hypocrite if she did.

Kira yawned into her hand for the third time in five minutes and for once was glad that most of her friends had a different study period.

Not all of them, though.

“You look like you’re about to faceplant into your notebook.”

Kira forced her tired eyes open to see Allison hovering by her table, notebooks of her own in her arms. She looked a little wary, which both made sense and didn’t. It had been a while since they’d talked. Not that they hadn’t talked at _all;_ they were pack, obviously, so they had all the same friends. They ate lunch at the same table and said hi when they passed each other in the hallway, but they hadn’t _really_ spent any time together since Allison got injured.

Which was Kira’s fault. She was the one who had backed off, who had taken herself out of the picture, so she couldn’t blame Allison for hesitating. Kira hastened to dump her backpack on the floor and free up a seat as she said, “I’m fine, really. Just a little tired lately.”

Allison sat down with a slump of relief. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“I’m fine,” Allison echoed her. “Not quite back up to full strength yet, but I’ll get there.”

“That’s good. I’m glad.”

There were a few seconds where they both just sat there, nodding and smiling and hoping the other girl would come up with something else to say. Kira sort of hated it. Ever since coming to this school and getting sucked into this particular clique, Allison had always been the one she’d found it easiest to be around—besides Scott, obviously.

Lydia was brilliant, but she was also intimidating, and she and Kira didn’t have all that much in common. Malia was great in small doses but they didn’t mesh as well one on one as they did in a group setting with other people as a buffer. Isaac had never seemed particularly open to making new friends, for all that he’d been friendly enough. And until recently, Kira hadn’t had much of an excuse to bond with Stiles.

But Allison was always approachable. She was friendly and reassuring and easy to get along with, and she knew what it was to find out her family wasn’t at all what they had claimed to be. Allison’s parents had been living double lives and lying to her about it too. She’d been thrown headfirst into the violent supernatural world with no warning and told it was her destiny to be there, and Kira realized all of a sudden that she _wanted_ to be able to talk to her again.

Before Kira could figure out how she could say that or if she should even try, Allison suddenly huffed and said, “Are you mad at me?”

Kira blinked at her. “Of course not,” she said. “Why would I be mad at you?”

“This whole... _thing_ with Scott,” Allison said, waving her hand vaguely. “I know you and he were getting really close, and then I said that stupid thing, and now you’re not, and I just feel like I got in the way or I stole him out from under you or something, and I—”

“No!” It hadn’t even occurred to Kira to be mad at Allison, or at Scott either, for that matter. She couldn’t blame them for their feelings any more than she could blame herself for hers. “You didn’t steal him. You didn’t do anything wrong and I’m not upset, I promise.”

Allison bit her lip. “Are you sure? You’ve been so…”

“I’m sorry,” Kira said miserably. “I’ve been super weird lately, I know, but it’s not your fault. I just didn’t know what to say. I never know what to say.”

“So we’re...okay?” Allison asked in a small voice, like she really cared about the answer. Like maybe she wanted to talk to Kira as much as Kira wanted to talk to her. It made that loud, anxious bubble that lived in Kira’s stomach deflate just a bit and she smiled.

“Allison, are you happy with Scott?”

A little flush of pink spread across Allison’s cheeks. “Yes.”

“Then we’re more than okay. We could never be anything else.”

Kira found that she actually meant that, completely and wholeheartedly. Even with that little lingering ache of what could’ve been, she couldn’t be anything but glad for the giant grin on Allison’s face. Besides, the ache wasn’t even as strong as she’d been expecting anyway. She was a little sad for herself, but mostly happy for her friends. And not just Allison and Scott either.

“So you’re happy with Scott,” Kira said slowly. “But the real question is...how are things going for _both_ of you with Isaac?”

Allison went _red_ and let out the kind of half-muttered, incoherent non-sentence that Kira usually only heard from Stiles. When she saw Kira laughing, she shut her mouth with a noise of embarrassment. “Shut _up,_ oh my god!”

Kira tried to stifle her giggles but it was a lost cause. She wiped at her streaming eyes instead and said, “I’m just saying, if ever there was a love triangle where polyamory was a viable solution, this would be it.”

Allison kicked Kira’s shin under the table, ignoring Kira’s squawk of indignation.

“Enough about my crazy love life,” she said. “How are things going with you and Stiles?”

That stopped Kira’s giggles in their tracks. It also stopped all of her higher brain functions apparently because she couldn’t think past _Stiles_ and _love life_ in the same breath. It didn’t compute. But also her face was heating up and she felt a distinct need to ramble but couldn’t find any words, and Allison’s eyes had gone round and shocked.

“Wait, really?” she asked with a relish always reserved for juicy gossip. “That’s totally not what I meant, but—”

“I don’t like Stiles,” Kira managed finally, pushing it past the tightening of her throat because there was just no way. “I mean, I _like_ Stiles! Of course I like Stiles. We’re friends, and you’re not friends with people you don’t like, but I don’t, like... _like-like_ Stiles.”

Allison raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Because it kind of seems like you might like-like Stiles. Which is cool!” she added hurriedly. “Stiles is great. I mean, he’s smart, he’s funny, he’s totally cute.”

Kira thought she might actually combust from embarrassment, not only because of Allison’s leading tone but also because Kira couldn’t disagree with anything she was saying. Stiles _was_ wicked smart, and he could always make her laugh even when she was ready to put her katana through a wall with frustration, and she had found her eyes lingering on Stiles’ profile during training recently, just waiting for the way his eyes would get bright when he managed something without freaking out.

But she didn’t have a crush on Stiles. That would be so weird.

That would be weird, right?

“I don’t…” Kira tried again, and when the rest of the words wouldn’t quite come out, she just settled for shaking her head way more times than was probably necessary.

Allison looked her up and down through narrowed eyes, considering. Then all the eager tension went out of her and she offered up a softer kind of smile. By way of apology, she said, “Do you wanna hear about how my dad reacted when he found out I was dating not one, but _two_ werewolves now?”

Kira’s relief at the merciful change of subject came out as a laugh. “Oh boy, would I ever.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The darkness was thin that night, and it barely howled at all. The wind still gusted, still carried with it that edge of unease, but it didn’t have quite the same ferocity as it usually did.

Kira watched like always, but for the first time she was almost certain that she could see something besides the pressing black. Somewhere in the distance was...something. Whatever the storm was circling around. She strained her eyes until they ached, trying to catch more than a glimpse, but she was too far.

She lifted a foot off the ground, shifted her weight to step forward, and—

—woke with a gasp to the beep of her alarm clock.

Disappointment drowned out the tinge of secondhand fear the dream had left her with, but she couldn’t put into words why it felt like she had failed at something important.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Okay, so Kira might like Stiles a little bit. _Shit._

It was fine. It didn’t matter anyway. She had had plenty of crushes in her life that had never gone anywhere, and she had plenty of practice with ignoring those dumb feelings until they fizzled out and left her alone. She would just keep on being friends with Stiles, because that was what they were:  _friends._ She was Stiles’ friend, like the rest of the pack were his friends, and that was good and valuable and important.

What did it matter that, now that Allison had called her out on her stupid crush, Kira couldn’t stop thinking about it?

Whatever. It would be fine.

She told herself that repeatedly as she waited on her porch before training and tried to pretend she wasn’t looking forward to the smile Stiles would probably give her when he got there, like he was happy to see her and even a dreaded training session with her mother wasn’t enough to bring him down.

He _did_ give her that smile, before he’d even put the Jeep in park, and she didn’t remember it making her heartbeat pick up like this the last time he’d done that. Damn it, Allison.

But that wasn’t all. As Stiles bounded up the front steps, _smiling_ like that, he also held up something colorful.

“Look what I found!”

“Are those…” Kira squinted at it. “...stickers?”

“Not any old stickers,” Stiles said, sweeping past her into the house and then turning to walk backwards so he could wave the sticker sheet at her. “Fox stickers! Tiny, adorable little cartoon foxes. I saw them on an end display at Walmart and couldn’t help myself.”

Kira plucked the sheet out of his hand as she followed him down the hall. “Why?” she asked. “Because cutesy fox stickers are so totally your aesthetic?”

Stiles snorted. He stopped short just outside the living room, abrupt enough that Kira almost ran right into him. Instead of backing up or putting more space between them though, Stiles just leaned against the wall right there, waving a hand through the air like he was swatting a fly. It was probably meant to be dismissive, but the hand came down to rub at the back of his neck and sort of ruined the effect.

“Nah, _no,_ course not,” he said. “I just…I don’t know, saw them, and they sort of...made me think of you. ‘Cause, you know, _fox,_ obviously. And tiny. And cute.”

Stiles’ eyes went wide the same second that Kira’s did, just as startled by his own words as she was. Then he ducked his head hurriedly, though not before Kira caught sight of the redness of his cheeks, and it hit Kira all at once that maybe her crush wasn’t that stupid after all. She looked down at the sheet in her hands—neat rows of little smiley foxes gamboling with flowers and hearts and rainbows—and, oh my god, Stiles thought she was _cute._

Stiles also looked like he was about to apologize or take it back or make a break for it, and Kira didn’t want any of those things to happen.

“Do you ever get sticker anxiety?” she asked, because _Stiles thought she was cute_ and her brain was short-circuiting. “You know, when you get awesome stickers that you love but you never actually use them because you know you can only stick them once and you can’t decide on exactly the right place for them?”

Stiles glanced up at her, a pinched look on his face while he evaluated if he’d fucked things up or not. Once he’d verified that Kira wasn’t running for the hills, he unfurled from where he’d curled in on himself and smiled tentatively.

“Yeah, sometimes,” he admitted. “Don’t think that’ll be a problem with these, though.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Stiles said, taking the sheet back from her. “I already know the perfect place for them.” He carefully peeled the first sticker from its backing and then, just as carefully, stuck it to Kira’s face. “There!” he said proudly. “Perfect.”

Kira might’ve had some sort of response to that, but the way he said that— _perfect_ —made her next breath stick in her chest. Stiles didn’t pull his hand away either. His fingers lingered there, brushing against her cheek just softly enough to give her shivers, and he was actually standing really close. From here she could see the greenish flecks in his brown eyes and the smattering of light freckles along his nose. The way his lips parted just a little bit.

She didn’t think it was her imagination that he was getting closer, leaning in until she could feel his breath against her lips, and she wanted it. She _wanted_ him to kiss her.

But he hesitated. Just like with the foxfire, he second-guessed himself and pulled back at the last second. Kira stared for a moment, a little off balance and a lot disappointed, but he looked so unsure of himself that she couldn’t be upset.

She stole back the sticker sheet, peeled one off, and stuck it on the tip of Stiles’ nose before he could say anything to ruin the moment. He blinked at her, caught off guard.

“There,” she said resolutely. “Perfect.”

Stiles laughed, bright and loud, and Kira _absolutely_ like-liked him because her face hurt from smiling and she wanted to make him laugh like that every day.

Before she could do anything crazy—like throw caution to the wind and kiss the daylights out of him—her mother was there in the doorway to the living room, giving them a very stern look.

“You’re late,” she said. She didn’t comment on the stickers, but she did give them both very judgmental looks.

Kira hastily peeled the one off her cheek and immediately wished she could put it back. Besides her, Stiles did the same. She wondered if he was as reluctant to get rid of them as she was.

Noshiko disappeared into the living room again, obviously expecting them to follow so that their lesson could begin. Kira and Stiles shared a look first, both fighting down smiles. Kira folded up the sticker sheet and tucked it in her pocket before taking Stiles by the hand to pull him inside. It thrilled her a little that he let her.

Their happy, playful mood ended pretty abruptly when Noshiko told them what they would be working on today.

“You want us to _what?_ ” Stiles demanded, voice cracking.

“All kitsune have some ability to create illusions,” Noshiko told him, unfazed. “To change what another being sees, hears, or feels. To alter another’s perception.”

“And you want us to—” Stiles pointed back and forth between himself and Kira.

“A kitsune’s illusion is most easily seen for what it is by another kitsune,” Noshiko said. “That, too, is a learned skill, and the two are most effectively practiced in tandem. You will attempt to create an illusion, and Kira will attempt to see through it.”

That seemed reasonable enough, but Kira still hesitated.

It wasn’t the _first_ time they’d branched into other prospective abilities. They had spent a few lessons on electricity, since they had both shown an aptitude for it before. Kira had excelled at that, unsurprisingly. Her control wasn’t fantastic, but it was improving, and even her mother had been impressed by how much she could do.

Stiles had succeeded in knocking the power out for the entire neighborhood, but Kira had gotten it back on, so it was okay.

Neither of them had any real affinity for water, though Stiles had managed a few ripples in their practice basin.

They both had some healing ability, Kira’s discovered during their experiments with fire and Stiles’ when he tripped and ran into an end table and the scrapes were gone by the end of the session.

This was, however, the first time they had branched into the abilities usually seen in void kitsunes and Kira already had a very sour feeling in her gut that said this wouldn’t go well. She’d been dreading this and hoping against hope that her mother would show a little tact and sensitivity in this area, but her dad had been right when he told her that Noshiko’s style of play was _aggressive._ She was never one to not approach a problem head on.

Stiles, on the other hand, was a big fan of evasion.

“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “No. I’m not doing anything to Kira. We don’t even know what would happen if I—” _Lost control,_ Kira filled in the blank. “If I fucked it up. Remember the blackout? I’m not risking blacking out Kira. No way.”

“A life lived without risk makes no gains,” Noshiko said. “If you do not try, you will always fail.”

“Mom, maybe this is just a little soon,” Kira put in. “We could try the water or the fire again and come back to this later when we feel a little more secure in our control.” And when Stiles had some more distance from everything that had gone down with the nogitsune, when he’d had the time to process it.

Stiles shot her a grateful look, but it didn’t have a chance to last.

“There is no harm in illusions,” Noshiko stated.

The look Stiles gave _her_ was disbelieving, and Kira couldn’t blame him for it. It may have all been illusions with the nogitsune, but Kira could still remember the pain of blades biting into her flesh over and over as she and Scott fought tooth, nail, and katana for a way out of it. It may not have been real, but she remembered the glint of the sword Stiles had held to his stomach as the nogitsune tried to taunt him into killing himself. _That_ would’ve been real enough.

Kira swallowed hard. “If we just hold off on this for a few—” she tried, but her mother ignored her.

“You must learn to harness this ability,” Noshiko insisted, sharp eyes trained on Stiles. “It is a fundamental part of being what you are. Kitsune have relied upon illusion for thousands of years. It is not an aspect of your nature that can be ignored.”

“Then I can practice it on _you,_ ” Stiles said.

“I am not the one who needs to learn.”

Kira knew that tone well; there would be no arguing with her. Her heels were dug in and any attempts at moving her would only make it worse.

Kira rubbed at her forehead and said, “Stiles, it’s okay. She’s right: illusions don’t actually cause any harm on their own. I’ll be fine if you just—”

Stiles rounded on her, though his tone was a lot softer, more concerned than angry. “You want me to experiment on you with powers I don’t know how to control?” he demanded. “Kira, what if I hurt you? What if I lose it and you get trapped in it and I can’t figure out how to reverse it or some shit, and I—”

Kira caught his hand as it flew wildly through the air and held it tight in both of hers. He froze for just a second, their eyes locked, but it wasn’t enough to mollify him. If anything, it made things worse. He pulled away, climbing to his feet.

“No!” he said again, and there was a feeling around him now, like his distress was a palpable thing. “No, it’s too dangerous, I’m not going to—”

“You are a coward,” Noshiko bit out. “You are irresponsible with your gifts. Only a fool expects to improve but refuses to try.”

A crackling sort of energy was building around Stiles, almost like a heat mirage over pavement. It made the hair on Kira’s arms stand on end. “Mom, please, will you just—”

“I’ve tried everything you told me to so far,” Stiles said, jabbing a finger at Noshiko.

“Then try this.”

“ _Fine!_ ” Stiles shouted, arms thrown out.

In a split second, everything went black. So much darker than when Stiles had knocked out the power. It wasn’t just that the lights were out or that their eyes were closed, but a solid, crushing darkness that filled the space and swirled around them like a physical entity.

It _screamed._

Kira knew this darkness, and it was no more frightening to her now than it had ever been. She called Stiles’ name but her voice was swallowed before it could sound. She almost fell trying to get to her feet because she couldn’t seem to feel the floor beneath her. Wind buffeted her, stronger than when she was simply observing. This time she was in the heart of it.

The world came back like a switched flip and Kira lost her balance. Her knees hit the floor and her head spun with the sudden influx of sensory information, too bright and too loud and too _present_ after so much nothing.

The first thing she was aware of, when she could be aware of anything, was a very familiar wheezing sound. She blinked open stinging, overloaded eyes to see Stiles, backed up against the far wall with his own eyes squeezed shut tight, hands tangled in his hair, breathing fast. He was muttering to himself, a constant litany of denials and pleas.

He didn’t hear her when Kira said his name the first time, and he didn’t notice her careful approach until she reached out to take hold of his arm. He flinched away, nearly overbalancing from the vehemence of his reaction.

“ _Don’t touch me,_ ” he cried. “Don’t— It’s not safe, _I’m_ not—”

“Stiles, look at me,” Kira said, though she didn’t try to touch him again. “I’m okay. Do you see that? I’m fine! You didn’t hurt me. It was just an illusion.”

But Stiles wasn’t listening. His eyes were distant and vague, focused on something inside that Kira couldn’t hope to see. He was backing away from her, step by shaky step, edging towards the door.

Hoarse and broken, he said, “I can’t be here. I’m not good for you.”

And then he was running.

Kira would’ve followed. She would’ve run after him, grabbed him and not let him go until she made him understand just how wrong he was. But she hadn’t made it to the door when a hand on her arm pulled her to an abrupt stop.

“Let him go,” Noshiko told her. Her hair was disheveled and there was dust on the knees of her slacks from where she, too, had lost her balance in the illusion, but her expression was as stoic as ever. For perhaps the first time in her life, Kira found absolutely no comfort or reassurance in that look.

Kira yanked her arm out of her mother’s grasp, immensely gratified by the shocked look it earned her.

“What the _hell_ was that?” she demanded.

Noshiko stared at her like she didn’t understand the question. “It was an illusion,” she said. “A remarkably strong one, if uncontrolled.”

Kira cut her off, something she had never done in her life. “No, I don’t care about that! What I care about is _Stiles._ Why did you have to push him that hard?”

“He needed to be pushed,” Noshiko said. “Abilities like his must be handled with extreme prejudice. Sometimes that requires a firm hand.”

She looked so wrongfooted at being put on the defensive that Kira had to wonder if anyone had ever yelled at her like this—if any of her _other students_ had ever questioned her like this. Kira certainly hadn’t. But she wasn’t going to smile and nod and accept her mother’s judgment again, not this time.

“Look,” she said, voice shaking as she backed towards the hallway, towards where Stiles had disappeared in a panic. “I don’t know how you usually do this, and I don’t care if these harsh teaching methods worked on all your other kids, but they’re _not_ working here.”

She turned, ready to slam the front door behind her and go after Stiles, but her mother’s words pulled her up short.

“Other kids?”

She had the gall to sound _confused._

Kira whirled back to face her, angry enough to pretend that the tears pricking at her eyes weren’t there, and said, “What? Nine hundred years and you expect me to believe this is the first time you’ve played house?”

Noshiko looked like she’d been slapped. “Kira. There are no others.”

“Oh god, just save it,” Kira said, fighting down the semi-hysterical laugh bubbling up in her throat because it was just one lie after another after another, and Stiles must have really been rubbing off on her because there was no way she would’ve said _any_ of this to her mother a few weeks ago. “I already know about Rhys! You told me yourself, this isn’t your first time around the block. You’ve lived long enough for twenty normal lives, okay, I _get_ it. But just because this authoritarian, ‘my way or the highway’ bullshit has worked in the past doesn’t mean it works on me, and it _definitely_ doesn’t work on Stiles. So just...save it for your next kid.”

Kira turned to leave again—she _needed_ to leave, before Stiles got too far away, before she lost her hold on herself, before she said something she might regret. Honestly, she had probably already done that last bit, but she was upset enough to stand by everything for the moment, at least.

And it’s not like anything she had said was wrong. She had just never expected to voice it. The thoughts had been there in the back of her mind, stewing away while she refused to look at them too closely. Ever since she had learned her mother’s impossible age and heard her tragic story of love lost, all with her current husband standing right there, knowing that he was just the latest in a long line. Examining her feelings on that meant acknowledging that that was all Kira was too: the latest.

She didn’t make it to the front door before her mom caught hold of her arm again and Kira could’ve screamed with it. She tried to pull away again but Noshiko’s grip was tight and, when Kira made herself turn to fight some more, her mother’s eyes were bright with unshed tears of their own.

“Kira,” she said again, and Kira had never heard her name said that way, like it was heavy. Like it had so much more weight than four simple letters should carry. “There are _no others._ ”

Kira tried to scoff, tried to brush it off like she had before, but she couldn’t manage the same scorn when her mom was looking at her so intensely. “But Rhys,” she tried.

Noshiko shook her head, lips pressed together. “It is true that your father is not my first love,” she said. “Nor even my first husband, though that does not mean that I don’t love him with all my heart. But Kira.” Her grip on Kira’s arm tightened and her voice broke when she said, “In all the centuries I have lived, you are my _only_ child.”

It seemed impossible. It should’ve been impossible, and with everything that lay between them it should’ve been impossible for Kira to believe her, but the roughness in her mother’s voice, the unusual display of emotion, the way she _clutched_ at her like if she just held on tightly enough then Kira could never pull away from her—Kira’s battle against her tears was lost and her next breath came out in a sob.

Her mother’s arms were around her then, pulling her close and stroking her hair like she used to do when Kira was small. Kira buried her face in her mom’s shoulder and cried like she hadn’t let herself do since this whole nightmare began.

“You are my everything, Kira,” Noshiko whispered against her temple. “My one and only daughter, and I love you more than life itself. The greatest gift I have ever been granted is that you share my nature.”

“So that we can have such great, training-inspired bonding moments?” Kira asked, only half joking.

Noshiko huffed out something close to a laugh, but Kira could feel the wetness on her cheeks when she said, “So that I will not have to lose you like I will your father.”

Kira cried some more. She cried for her mother, long-lived enough to have watched generations live and die around her. She cried for herself, for the knowledge that she would have to do the same and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. She cried for her father, mortal and in love with someone he could never be enough for because his life could only ever be a fraction hers.

She cried for herself some more, because she was seventeen and _terrified_ of everything she had become and the life that was suddenly laid out before her.

Then she cried a bit for Stiles, because he was seventeen too and he hadn’t asked for this any more than she had. Because he was just as terrified and didn’t have a kitsune mother to lean on, for all the pros and cons that carried with it. Because he was out there somewhere, hurting and alone and so, so scared.

Kira forced herself to pull back from her mother’s embrace. She pulled her sleeves down over her hands to wipe the tears from her face as best she could and sniffed in that gross, snotty way everyone did after crying for a long time. She said, “I need to find Stiles.”

Noshiko let her go, but she called Kira’s name before the front door could close behind her.

“I am sorry,” she told her. “I have tried to give him the guidance necessary to grow into what he can be.”

“I know,” Kira said. “But that’s not what he needs.”

“Then what is?”

 _That_ Kira didn’t know. Her fingers found the sheet of stickers in her pocket, curling around the glossy paper. Stiles’ panicked words were still loud in her ears, the way he’d flinched away from her painfully clear in her memory, the dark wind that howled with his fear. All she knew was that she couldn’t let things go on the way they were.

She raised her head high and said, with all the false confidence she could muster, “I’ll find out.”

She would have to figure something out.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles wasn’t answering his phone. Usually when he ran out of training, he texted Kira to let her know that he had made it home and hadn’t run his Jeep into a ditch somewhere. Or someone else texted on his behalf, if he was really fucked up. But it had been over a half hour already, no one had texted her, and she was getting very close to freaking out.

She didn’t pass an overturned Jeep anywhere on her way through town, at least, so she could be relatively sure he hadn’t crashed. Strangely enough, she didn’t find that very reassuring.

He wasn’t at his house. His Jeep wasn’t in the driveway, and neither was his dad’s cruiser. Kira even took a leaf out of the werewolves’ book and scaled the tree by his window to make sure he wasn’t in his room, but the house was empty and Stiles nowhere to be found.

She tried to call Stiles’ cell again, but it went straight to voicemail, so either the battery had died or he had turned it off. She cursed and got back in the car. There was only one other place she could think to look.

Scott must have heard her coming because he opened the door before she had even finished knocking. He already looked concerned, and Kira couldn’t blame him because her chemosignals were probably broadcasting her agitation better than a billboard.

“Kira, are you—”

“Have you seen Stiles?”

Scott’s frown deepened. “Not today. Why? What’s wrong?”

Kira cursed again—Scott’s eyebrows flew sky high at that; she wasn’t exactly known for foul language—and headed for her car again. She would just have to drive around until she found him. Maybe there was some kind of kitsune ability she could use to find him. He had caused electrical disturbances when he was upset before, maybe she could dig into the city’s grid and look for any power surges.

Scott rushed around to cut her off, hands held up. “Wait, wait, wait,” he said. “Slow down.”

“I don’t have time to slow down, Scott, I need to find Stiles!”

“And I can help you do that,” he said. “I’m getting pretty good at this whole tracking thing, remember? But first you need to take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on. Can you do that?”

Kira’s attempt at a deep breath made her a little lightheaded, so Scott probably had a good point about slowing down. Only she didn’t want to slow down. She had already wasted too much time and who knew where Stiles was now or what he was doing. He could’ve crashed somewhere, he could’ve really lost control and let his powers run wild on accident, he could’ve done any number of truly stupid things, he could’ve—

“ _Breathe._ ”

Scott’s hands were heavy and warm on her shoulders, his voice firm and assured, this just _had_ to be what the whole alpha thing was about because the steadiness of his presence was more comforting than Kira would ever have expected. She breathed. It was a little shaky, a little uneven, but Scott smiled at her and nodded and told her to do it again.

“Okay,” he said. “Now tell me what happened.”

“Stiles freaked,” Kira told him. “My mom pushed him into trying one of the nogitsune’s abilities, and he was really good at it. Like, _too_ good at it.”

Scott closed his eyes. “Shit,” he breathed.

“It wasn’t bad or anything,” Kira said quickly. “He didn’t hurt us.” That was the most important thing, the thing that Stiles didn’t seem to understand.

“Of course he didn’t,” Scott said, because he was a good friend like that. Because he had more faith in Stiles than Stiles would ever have in himself. “He wouldn’t.” He blew out a heavy breath. “Okay. Okay, don’t worry. I’ll call Isaac and Derek, and we can track his scent. We’ll find him.”

He pulled away, phone in hand, and Kira collapsed against her car. She felt like she had run a hundred miles and then some. She pulled out the sticker sheet again and she could hardly believe that Stiles had given them to her just a few hours ago; it felt like days. They were a little bent from being in her pocket, but the foxes still smiled and frolicked just the same.

The one Stiles had stuck to her cheek was there too, not really sticky enough to stay in its place anymore. The edges were curling so Kira peeled it off again, rolling it between her fingers, back and forth, back and forth.

“What’re those?”

Kira jumped; she hadn’t noticed Scott finishing his calls. He was there, though, peering down at the stickers curiously.

“Nothing,” she said, trying to stuff the sheet back into her pocket, but her hands were cooperating with her. “It’s nothing, just some...stickers. That Stiles gave me earlier. It’s silly. No big deal.”

But Scott was looking at her in that same, narrow-eyed way that Allison had done. “Let me see?”

Face burning, Kira handed the sheet over. She kept hold of the loose sticker though, furling and unfurling it against her palm as Scott looked over the rest. She didn’t know why this felt so weird, or why it mattered what Scott thought. They were just _stickers,_ it wasn’t like they meant anything, really.

Only they did. And it meant something when Scott smiled, too, and some tiny, anxious thing in Kira’s stomach broke loose and fell away.

“Stiles got you these?” he asked, his tone halfway between surprised and teasing.

“Shut up, they’re just stickers,” Kira said.

Scott laughed. “Nothing is ever _just_ anything with Stiles. Trust me, I should know. If he’s getting you silly presents just to make you smile, then he cares about you. He cares a lot.”

Warmth welled up in Kira’s chest, fierce and bright and pleased. Until she remembered why Stiles had been so afraid in their lesson. It hadn’t been just the power, but the idea of testing it out _on her._ Of putting _her_ at risk. She wouldn’t be arrogant enough to think this was all about her—he had plenty of other valid reasons to be fucked up about everything—but she had certainly been the trigger for today’s spiral, and that put a bit of a damper on any good feelings she might’ve had at getting confirmation that her crush wasn’t a one way thing.

And none of it mattered until they found him anyway.

They only had to wait a few minutes. Allison’s car pulled into the driveway with a short honk, Isaac hanging out the passenger window.

“Derek’s gonna start at Stiles’ house and work out from there,” he said, skipping over the pleasantries to get right to business, which Kira appreciated. “We’ll go back to the Yukimuras’ and see if we can follow any kind of trail from there.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Scott put a hand on Kira’s arm and gave her an encouraging smile. He held out the sticker sheet and Kira took it back with an inordinate amount of relief.

As she watched Scott climb into the backseat of Allison’s car, she wished more than anything that enhanced senses were one of the abilities she had so that she could go with them, so that she could actually _help._ But her senses were mostly average, and she didn’t know Beacon Hills as well as the rest of the pack who had grown up there, and this wasn’t a situation where her many burgeoning powers did anyone any good.

Before they drove away, Allison leaned out of her window to say, “Don’t worry. We’ve found him before and we’ll find him again.”

“And I’ll text you updates,” Scott promised. “I’m sure he’s fine. He just needs some time to calm down and he’ll be alright.”

“You should go home,” Isaac said. “Get some sleep.”

_Sleep._

It didn’t truly hit Kira until her friends were halfway down the street exactly why that illusion had felt so familiar to her. The swirling, screaming darkness. She had dreamed about it, yes, and they had never felt like her dreams at all.

Because they weren’t.

They were _Stiles’_ dreams.

It was another of the void kitsune abilities they had been avoiding from the start: dream manipulation. Kira was willing to bet that he had no idea he was even doing it, but Stiles had been crossing over into her dreams this whole time. It was no wonder he had been so exhausted lately if _that_ was what he was suffering through every night. Things had been bad enough for Kira just on the fringes, but being right in the center of that illusion earlier had been so much worse.

So maybe it didn’t matter if Stiles ran away from her, or if the others could track him down or not. Kira already knew where she could find him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Getting to sleep wasn’t easy, especially when Kira didn’t know if this would work. Stiles might still be awake, wherever he was, even if it was past one in the morning by the time Kira felt tired enough that going to bed might not end in her just lying there and checking her phone obsessively. The texts from Scott said they were still looking.

She finally turned her phone off, made some of that herbal tea her dad had been offering her lately, did some deep breathing exercises she had gotten from her mom, and after so much stress and emotional upheaval, that was all it took to put her under.

She needn’t have worried so much. Between one blink and the next, it felt like, she was there. The darkness—the _void_ —was everywhere, thick and heavy and tangible. The wind howled, lashing out like it was angry, or perhaps like it was _hungry._

It felt like panic tasted.

But Kira wasn’t afraid. She couldn’t see through the storm, but she knew now what was in its center, what the real victim of all this strife was. The victim and the source. She just needed to get to him.

The first step wasn’t too hard. Even if the floor was indistinguishable from the sky and she couldn’t actually see where she was going, she put one foot in front of the other. And she kept walking. It didn’t matter that she didn’t feel like she was going anywhere because the wind was picking up, frigidly cold as it tried to shove her back.

She was going the right way.

She gritted her teeth and pushed on.

The screaming of the void, so loud it was almost silent, made her ears ring, and the wind was practically a living thing now. It grabbed at her like icy hands, took hold of her hair and her arms and her ankles, and _pulled._

Kira fought against their grip. Despite wearing pajamas to bed, she was dressed normally now, with her sword belt around her waist. It didn’t seem to hit anything flesh-like or solid when she swung it, but the pressure against her lessened just a bit, so she swung it again. Over and over she swung, pushing herself head first through the shrieking gale until she caught the first flicker of something other than blackness and pushed even harder.

She almost fell flat on her face when the resistance suddenly gave way; the eye of the storm. There was no real light here, not any more than anywhere else, but she had no trouble seeing Stiles.

He was on his knees, bent over with his arms over his head. Just like in Kira’s living room, he was muttering to himself, a litany of _no_ and _please_ and _wake up_ and _not again._ But the storm raged on, a physical manifestation of the fear it itself engendered in him, like some fucked up feedback loop that he couldn’t break out of. Not by himself.

Kira said his name and here, in the relative quiet of the eye, she could hear it, but only just. She had to shout to get Stiles’ attention, and it still took several times to get him to look up. His eyes went wide, but he shook his head, and Kira could see the words on his lips even if they weren’t loud enough for her to hear: _not real not real not real._

“Stiles, it _is_ real,” she said. “Well, _I’m_ real, at least. I’m real and you’re real.”

Stiles shook his head harder, but he spoke to her this time. “No. No, Kira, you can’t be here. It’s not— It’s a dream, you can’t—”

“I know it’s a dream,” Kira told him. “It’s your dream, but it’s my dream too. I’ve been having it for weeks. Stiles, you’re dreamwalking.”

A burst of wind sliced through their little sheltered space, echoing the horror on Stiles’ face as he realized what he had been doing: invading Kira’s mind, twisting her dreams, doing to her exactly what the nogitsune had done to him, however unintentionally. He grasped at his hair again, eyes squeezing shut to block everything out, and his distress only whipped the storm into an even bigger frenzy.

Kira lurched forward, pushed off balance by the encroaching gust. “Stiles, listen to me!” she called. “It doesn’t have to be like this. All this darkness? It’s _yours._ ”

“You think I don’t know that?” Stiles shouted back. “Of course I know. But I can’t make it stop. Kira, I can’t make any of it stop. I can’t control it and that’s why you need to go! It’s too dangerous for you here.”

“But that’s just it.” Kira fought another step forward until she could reach out, until she could take hold of Stiles’ wrist. His skin was almost as cold as the wind; he was shivering. “Stiles, this isn’t something you need to control. You need to _let it go._ ”

Stiles looked up at her with wet, red-rimmed eyes and so much desperation that Kira could feel it in the very air around her. She pulled his fingers from his hair and laced them with her own instead.

“This darkness,” Kira said. “It isn’t evil. It isn’t something dark or malevolent inside you. Stiles, all it is is _fear._ It’s _your fear._ And the more afraid of it you are, the worse it gets.”

“Then how do I stop?” Stiles clutched at her hand like a lifeline. “Tell me, please, how do I stop being afraid when _this_ is what I create?” He looked around and the storm howled back at him.

Kira pulled his eyes back to her with a hand on his cheek. “Don’t think about that,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. All of this is just an illusion. Focus on what’s real.”

Stiles’ voice cracked when he said, “I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“Yes, you do,” Kira told him. “I’m real, remember? And you’re real. Both of us, together, Stiles. _We_ are real. And I can prove it.”

Loath as she was to lose even the tiniest point of contact between them, she pulled her hand back from Stiles’ face to reach into her pocket. As she’d hoped, the sticker sheet was there. Stiles stared at it, mouth open.

“Remember these?” Kira said. “You gave them to me. Because you thought I might like them. Because you wanted to make me happy. Where’s the darkness in that?”

Stiles’ eyes strayed sideways, back to the maelstrom, but Kira didn’t let him turn away.

“Maybe you’re void,” she said, the first time either of them had been bold enough to put the possibility out there, and she had his full attention again, every bit of his fear written so plainly on his face. Kira smiled anyway. “So what? That doesn’t make you bad.”

Stiles swallowed hard. “Doesn’t it?”

Kira let the stickers fall, taking Stiles’ face in her hand again. He leaned into her touch, and he felt less cold now than he had before. She leaned down slowly, heart in her throat, but he didn’t move away, and her lips brushed against his when she said, “It could _never_.”

His skin may still have been cool, but his mouth was warm and pliant. He made a soft noise of surprise in his throat, even as his lips moved against hers to return the kiss, and when Kira finally pulled back, there was silence; the wind had stopped.

Stiles’ face as he stared up at her was limned with gold, and for a second Kira thought it might be her, that she might actually be glowing. But it was just the darkness around them melting away, letting in the light. She beamed up toward the lightening sky, but when she looked back down, Stiles was gone.

Between one blink and the next, she woke, alone in her bed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was only two thirty in the morning. She had another missed text from Scott that said they were still looking, and one from Derek that said the same. For a minute, Kira was absolutely sure that she had imagined the entire thing, that it had all just been an actual dream.

But it hadn’t been. She _knew_ it.

So she hauled herself out of bed with half a mind to go running off to find Stiles herself, but the fact that she had been able to find him in some weird, shared, other dimension didn’t mean she would suddenly be able to track him down in real life. It had to mean _something_ though. It had to do some good.

Kira was about to call Scott and tell him everything that had happened, just in case it could help somehow, when the nighttime quiet of the house was interrupted by the squeak of the front door. It was too late for any normal visitor, and no burglar would be stupid enough to break into a house with a light on and two cars in the driveway.

But there was one person who might let himself in.

Kira flew down the stairs inadvisably fast and flung herself around the corner into the front hallway, and Stiles was there. He was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, rumpled and wrinkled like he’d tried to sleep in the backseat of the Jeep, but he looked wide awake now.

He asked one question: “Was it real?”

Kira didn’t bother answering in words. She just threw her arms around Stiles’ neck and kissed him for all he was worth. He caught her around the waist and held on tight, and Kira barely had the presence of mind to wonder if this was their _real_ first kiss or if the dreamscape one counted too. She decided it didn’t matter; they were both damn good kisses.

The hallway light flicked on and a very disapproving cough sounded. They broke apart in a hurry to find both of Kira’s parents at the end of the hallway, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.

It was not _the_ most uncomfortable moment of Kira’s life—probably because Stiles’ arms were still around her, and they were warm and strong, and she felt too good right now to feel bad about anything—but it was very close.

“Well,” Stiles said into the expectant silence. “This is awkward.”

Ken opened his mouth, obviously intending to read Stiles the riot act and possibly ground Kira for life, but, to literally everyone’s surprise, Noshiko stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. She examined the two of them through narrowed eyes for a painfully long time, and then the harsh lines of her face softened into something approaching a smile.

“It’s good to see you well, Stiles,” she said. “And I expect to see you back at training next week.”

That gave Stiles four days off, which was more than either of them had gotten in well over a month, and also completely ignored the whole kissing thing. Kira watched Stiles start to comment on one or both of those things and then make the conscious choice to _not_ look the gift horse in the mouth.

“Thank you,” he said instead. “I’ll be here with bells on.”

Noshiko gave him a dry half-smile. “I’m sure you will.” She bid them both a goodnight and disappeared back down the hallway. Ken lingered just long enough to give them a stern look that wasn’t all that effective considering his striped pajamas, then followed her.

As soon as her parents were out of sight, Kira buried her face in Stiles’ chest to muffle a bout of helpless giggles. Stiles laughed too, pressing the sound into her hair, and tightened his hold on her even more. Kira didn’t mind at all. In fact, she probably would’ve stayed there all night long, wrapped up in Stiles’ embrace, and been happy. But her phone buzzed in the pocket of her pj pants: another update on the search.

Kira grimaced and made herself draw back, though she was mollified by the way Stiles seemed distinctly unhappy about having to let her go.

“You should probably call Scott,” Kira said. “And Derek.”

Stiles made a face. “Why would I call Derek? Or Scott, actually?”

“Because they’ve been out looking for you for hours,” Kira told him. It sort of came out more like a question, though. At Stiles horrified look, she said, “You disappeared and didn’t text me! I was worried!”

Stiles groaned. “My phone died! Wait, dude, what time is it?”

“Almost three.”

“ _Seriously?_ Ah, fuck me, my dad is gonna be so mad.”

Kira rolled her eyes and gave Stiles a shove. “He’s just gonna be glad that you’re okay.” Instead of taking her hand back like she’d intended, it ended up fisted in Stiles’ shirt. She didn’t want to let go. “We’re all glad you’re okay.”

Stiles looked down at her hand, then up at her, and his smile was small and sweet. He brought a hand up to lay over hers, holding it against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat under her palm, quick but steady.

He leaned in first this time. Kira met him halfway. Be it their second kiss or their third, it might’ve been the best.

“I really should go,” Stiles whispered, though he didn’t make any move to actually do it.

“Yeah,” Kira said. “It’s late and everyone’s worried. You should go let them all know that you’re not missing or dead or anything.”

Stiles laughed again. He leaned into her for another long minute before he sighed and pulled back for real. “Okay, I’m going.”

Kira followed him to the door, still unlatched from Stiles’ hasty entrance. The Jeep was parked crooked in their driveway and its driver’s side door was hanging open too. He’d been in a hell of a rush to get here—to get to _her—_ and Kira found herself hiding a grin behind her hand.

Before Stiles could get into his car, Kira called out, “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

Stiles scoffed. “With how long I’m gonna be grounded? In your dreams.”

“If I’m lucky.”

It was too dark to be sure, but Kira was almost certain Stiles blushed. That was okay though; she was blushing too. Kira ducked back inside before she could say anything else sappy and stupid and embarrassing, but her lips were still tingling from their last kiss, and it took Stiles almost three whole minutes to bring himself to drive away, so at least she wasn’t the only one reeling from it.

Once the rumble of the Jeep had faded—once Kira had gotten breath back in her lungs and her thoughts unstuck from just how comfortable Stiles’ hugs were—she retrieved her phone. She dismissed the latest text from Scott and sent one back that Stiles was okay, he was back and safe and on his way home, and got a very relieved text back right away.

By the time she got back upstairs to her bedroom, she had another text, this one from Stiles. It said, _made it home, don’t worry about me,_ with two fox emojis and a heart. She shook her head, but she put her phone away and climbed back into bed with a stubborn smile on her face.

For the first time in weeks, she was looking forward to falling asleep.


End file.
